No automatic matchmaking, but online combat includes tons of options, is smooth in 4K.

Sam Machkovech

This screenshot is a crop of the full 3840x2160 rendering in Halo 5 Forge on Windows 10. The full 4K image is in a gallery below. But if you want to believe in 4K Halo, this high-res crop just might convince you.

When Microsoft announced Halo 5 Forge
as a free, Windows 10-only game, we wondered exactly what gamers would
and wouldn't get from its eventual September launch. We knew the free
download would include the series' long-running "Forge" mode (since,
hey, it's titular), meaning players would be able to use mice and
keyboards to build their own custom Halo 5 maps and online-combat alterations. But what else?

Microsoft confirmed to me in May that the mode would also enable online multiplayer, so users wouldn't have to dash to an Xbox One
console to test their Forge creations. You could build your own level
and then invite anybody on your Xbox Live friends list to join a battle
in Halo 5's "custom game" mode
so long as they, too, were running the limited Windows 10 version of the
game. That didn't sound like a bad freebie, but it seemed like a pretty
limited tease and/or advertisement of what Halo 5 on console offers.

What Microsoft didn't tell me back then, and instead revealed on Thursday with the free download's launch, is that the free game includes some pre-made levels. Not just the weird-looking Forge ones, either.

Halo 5 Forge contains
the entire "Arena" mode. All 15 pre-made maps and every Microsoft-built
twist on the game's quintet of Forge sandboxes are here, matching the
retail version of Halo 5's Arena mode on Xbox One.

I downloaded the free Windows 10 game (yes, this requires the Windows 10 Anniversary update) and connected my rig to a 4K monitor to test out exactly what gamers are getting here. My takeaway is this: Halo 5 Forge is
probably the best free, few-strings-attached PC shooter of the past few
years, thanks to its surprising depth of content and its astoundingly
crisp performance.

So long as you do your own matchmaking

Mouse and keyboard options in Halo?! It's been too long!

Map 'em all to your heart's content.

That there's a dynamic resolution, but in my
testing experience, it stuck tightly to a full 4K render.

Let's get the bad news out of the way. You will not be able to simply tap "find game" and get into a few rounds of free Halo 5
combat like on Xbox One. You also won't be able to set up a mode in
which the game automatically rotates through pre-set modes and options
on a level-by-level basis. Instead, Microsoft has thrown this game out
to fans and told them, "Set your own lobbies up."

Should you want to enjoy free Halo 5
Arena battling on this free PC version, you'll need to sleuth around
and find an online community where like-minded PC gamers are exchanging
Xbox Live "gamertags" (user IDs) and joining each other's "custom game"
lobbies. Those lobbies are the only way to load and get into online multiplayer in Halo 5 Forge.

Luckily, this is 2016. Those discoveries are a
lot easier these days. The way I got into some quick, free fragging was
through Discord, a Slack-like chat service that lets gamers create free
lobbies on their Web browsers to coordinate this exact sort of ID
exchange. Arguably the busiest place to do so right now is this "Halo 5 Forge LFG" Discord channel, which is humming with players on the game's first day.

Of course, you may have a boisterous enough
friends list to invite known players to your own custom games without
trouble, at which point you can pick from the game's 23 pre-built modes
(from standard "Slayer" deathmatch to the beloved "Grifball"
combat-sport twist to Halo 5's
rapid-fire, round-by-round "Breakout" battles) and load a game on any
map, either pre-built or custom-made. Just like on console, this PC
build's different Arena modes have different player counts, with
Breakout topping out at 4v4 team combat and Slayer capped at 16 players
total.

If you want to pick through thousands of
fan-made Forge maps, you're stuck with a console-like interface full of
giant thumbnails and limited level descriptions, but tabs for "featured"
and "most liked" level choices will point you toward decent stuff (and
classic level remakes) in a pinch. As a lobby leader, should you pick a
fan-made level, everyone in your lobby will immediately and conveniently
download that same level.